


promises of the heart

by delightwrites



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Oh also, Spirit World (Avatar), gratitious use of the words 'flameo' and 'hotman', i have no idea how it works help, i'm sorry it was obligatory to discuss it, listen they are just vibing in the spirit world, so uh beware, the fact that the lu ten&kuzon tag doesn't exist is proof that i have no idea what i'm doing, the whole premise of this fic is that they are dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24875245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delightwrites/pseuds/delightwrites
Summary: "Lu Ten wakes up and his first thought is that he's dead.His second thought is that he's in a forest and the constellations above are unknown to him. And his third one is that he's not alone."-Lu Ten made a promise to his father. Then, Lu Ten died before the walls of Ba Sing Se. Fortunately, he's not the only one who made an impossible promise in his lifetime.or, the one in which Prince Lu Ten makes friends with a man who uses way too much outdated slang
Relationships: Aang & Kuzon (Avatar), Iroh & Lu Ten, Lu Ten & Kuzon
Comments: 46
Kudos: 305





	promises of the heart

**Author's Note:**

> this is so very niche, i don't even know why i wrote it, i just needed to. enjoy!

"Some friendships are so strong, they can even transcend lifetimes."

* * *

Lu Ten wakes up and his first thought is that he's dead.

His second thought is that he's in a forest and the constellations above are unknown to him. And his third one is that he's not alone.

There's a man crouching next to him, in military uniform slightly different from Lu Ten's. It's as if it was outdated. Also it has huge scorchmarks on it.

"Oh flamin' Agni," the man, who looks about the same age as Lu Ten, mutters and he studies him with amber eyes gone wide. "I didn't think anyone would be the same kind of stupid as me."

"Who are you?" Lu Ten sits up and asks. "What is this place?"

The man sits in silence but keeps staring at Lu Ten.

"I am your Prince, I demand you answer me," Lu Ten says, keeping all his calm he can manage. "What is this place?"

"You're the Prince? Which Prince?"

"Are you kidding-... I'm Prince Lu Ten, son of Iroh!"

"Which one's Iroh?" The man asks nonchalantly. Lu Ten is growing more and more annoyed but there's genuine curiousity in the stranger's voice and that... that makes him curious as well.

"My father is the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, son of Fire Lord Azulon."

"Ah..." the stranger nods. For a minute he seems deep in his thoughts, then he snaps his head up. "How long has it been since the comet?"

"What?"

"Sozin's comet. How many years has it been?"

"Uhh... almost ninety-five."

The man's eyes widen. He drops down and though Lu Ten doesn't know him, he can tell he is sad. Deeply, achingly sad.

And Lu Ten’s father taught him compassion.

He scoots closer to the stranger and puts a hand on his shoulder. He looks at him with suspiciously wet eyes but puts on a smile. It's a crooked smile and his face has a dimple on one side and Lu Ten has no idea why he noticed this.

"So you really are a prince, huh, Lu Ten?"

He nods.

"An honor to meet you, my good prince hotman," the stranger says, still smiling and his words only startle Lu Ten a little bit. "I'm Kuzon."

-

"Kuzon?" Lu Ten tries again. "Where are we? How did we get here?"

"Look hotman, you wouldn't understand. I don't even understand all of it and apparently I've been here for a while!" Kuzon starts his protest but then he shrugs. "But you should know, I guess, so I’ll just be out with it... We're in the Spirit World."

"Do you mean we are... dead?"

Lu Ten was actually kind of expecting this.

"Short answer, yeah. Long answer, only sort of. We both made a promise in front of Agni which we didn't fulfill and now the great spirits won't let us die until we do. Or technically, they did let us die, but we're stuck here until we do what we promised we'd do."

_Agni is my witness, Father..._

"So I suggest you quickly figure out what your promise was and if you are lucky, you can get out of here without having to spend several decades in this boring-"

"I promised my father we'd see each other again," Lu Ten blurts out.

Suddenly, the absence of his father hits him, crushing him like a rock. He doesn't want to think about him seeing only half of Lu Ten's men making it back to camp - if they made it at all - and asking about his son. He doesn't want to think about his father mourning for him. He still does. He can't _not_ think about it.

"Well I guess you won't have a chance to do that now," Kuzon mumbles, like he isn't sure if he should say anything at all. Lu Ten feels a stinging in his eyes and no, he can't cry, he won't-

This time it's Kuzon who gives his shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

"The war?" he asks sympathetically.

Lu Ten nods and that little movement is enough to send his tears spilling. But he doesn't care anymore.

"Ba Sing Se," he starts and his voice shakes. "The siege has been going on for more than a year. We... we broke through the Outer Wall but... but it's impossible. The city can't be taken." He thinks of his troops, his trusted officers, his fellow soldiers who fell before the walls. He doesn't think of himself. "So many dead... and for nothing."

Kuzon squeezes his shoulder again.

"I... I can't fulfill my promise to Agni..." Lu Ten mutters. "H-how could I? I... I died too..."

"I've been there, hotman," Kuzon offers quietly as his means of support. "I think Agni doesn't particularly like us. People promise stupid things all the time but the spirits never care. With us, though..."

If anything, this is making Lu Ten feel worse, thank you so very much, Kuzon.

"It gets better after a while, Lu Ten. You need to feel your sadness, I think, and then you gotta let go, you know. At least that’s how I remember from what a friend told me once, a long time ago."

Lu Ten feels it. And lets go.

And he cries. A lot. And this is the spirit world and he's alone - well, nearly alone. But he cries and no one judges him.

-

Kuzon makes tea. Lu Ten has absolutely no idea where he got that teapot or the leaves or the water or even the fire - they can't bend here, it's annoying - but this is the Spirit World and nothing makes sense anyway.

He's learned to roll with it. Also he misses tea.

He takes the cup from Kuzon's hand with a grateful nod. It's not as good as how his father makes it but it’s enough. Enough to give him an almost unbearable sense of homesickness. He misses his father and his men. He misses home and he misses his baby cousin Zuko, and even little Azula. He misses his mother too, though she died long ago. He stares into the steaming cup. He's getting better at managing his grief these days.

"So," Kuzon asks, keeping a casual tone while sipping his tea. "Ba Sing Se still stands?"

Lu Ten's hands are shaking a bit but these days, he's getting better at managing it.

He nods.

_So many dead-_

"Then there is hope just yet," Kuzon smiles.

"Hope?"

"For the end of the war."

"The war will end when the Fire Nation establishes rule in the Earth Kingdom-"

" _When_? Lu Ten, Ba Sing Se still stands and it will keep standing. The city can't be taken, you said it yourself."

"But-" The prince wants to protest. He wants to, but the words are stuck in his throat.

"Think with that stupid head of yours, Prince Hotman..." Kuzon's voice is careful, almost gentle as he says that. "The war has to end. With or without the victory of the Fire Nation.

_So many dead-_

"Those are traitor words!" Lu Ten snarls.

Kuzon just shrugs.

"Then your words are, as well. So many dead, for nothing. You also said that yourself."

-

"Hey, Prince Hotman?"

"Yeah?" He's gotten used to the name by now. He's gotten used to Kuzon using outdated slang and wearing half-a-century-old clothes and not knowing anything of current events. He doesn't know when he was born but Lu Ten suspects he's most likely older than the oldest general in his grandfather's war council.

"As mighty flamin' Fire Prince and all that... you wouldn't happen to have news about the Avatar, would you?"

Lu Ten raises his eyebrows.

"The Avatar died. Ninety-five years ago." This is a fact. Lu Ten knows that Kuzon knows it as well. "And then, as far as we know, they weren't reborn in the Water Tribe. The cycle is broken... Why do you ask?"

"Just 'cause, you know... If anyone could end this stupid war, I think it'd be the Avatar."

Kuzon can be hopeful like that. Lu Ten's gotten used to it by now.

"Yeah, it would," he sighs and allows himself to be hopeful - just a little bit - as well.

-

He doesn't exactly mean to ask. He figures Kuzon would have told him already, if he wanted to. But it does sort of accidentally slip out one day.

Okay, not just any day. If Lu Ten's counting the days right - and time in the Spirit World passes as it normally should - then this day is his birthday.

Lu Ten can't bear to think of his father today and so he asks Kuzon.

"What was your promise?"

Kuzon only seems startled by the question for a second. Then he sighs and sits down and Lu Ten thinks he sees how old he actually is. He's old and tired and sad. Deeply, achingly sad.

"You don't have to tell me if-"

"What do you know about the Air Nomads, Lu Ten?"

The thing is, Lu Ten knows a lot about the Air Nomads. He knows the things he was taught about them and he also knows most of those are lies.

He’s seen the Air Temples.

See, Lu Ten was born into this war, just like his father, just like his uncle and his little cousins. Lu Ten knows what an army looks like and he knows what a defeated army looks like. What it’s supposed to look like.

It’s not supposed to look like ash filling the yards of temples, like burnt skeletons of unarmed nuns and monks, like corpses of children huddled together in a room with scorchmarks on the wall.

_So many dead-_

He wants to say something like _They died..._ but he knows it wouldn’t be the full truth.

“They were killed...” he says instead.

Kuzon is nodding slowly.

“One of the best friends I ever had was an Air Nomad.”

The prince gasps, sharply.

“I was only eight when we first met,” Kuzon goes on, smiling at the memory. “He visited every year after that. We explored my home island and went to the Summer Solstice Festival. He took me flying on his bison and showed me cool airbending tricks... There was... I didn’t notice it then, but there was so much propaganda already. And then...”

“The comet,” Lu Ten whispers.

“Yeah,” Kuzon nods and his smile turns sad. “The comet. I was only thirteen and I refused to believe my best friend was gone. I thought that maybe, somehow, he escaped, you know? And that’s when... that’s when I made the promise. I promised I’d find him.”

-

One day, Lu Ten hears music. It's played somewhere very far away but it's music, actual music and he can't believe his ears.

But there's also a weird, rythmic tapping sound closer to him and when Lu Ten looks over at Kuzon, he can't believe his eyes. His friend is jumping around in what looks like a circle and he's waving his arms around like he's sick or possessed by a spirit or something.

"Flameo, Lu Ten!" He grins his usual crooked smile and waves at him. "You know, it's the Summer Solstice and everyone's celebrating out there in the human world. But we are close and the music seeps through!"

He spins around and jumps up. His movement distinctly reminds Lu Ten of a firebending kata but at the same time it looks utterly ridiculous.

"What in Agni's name-" the prince asks pointedly, "are you doing?"

"Haha, good one! Don't tell me you forgot what dancing looks like under short seventy-nine years!"

Lu Ten blinks. Then he blinks again because _he knows dancing, okay_ , he was taught ballroom dancing and this... this is about as far from it as the North Pole from the South.

Kuzon stops and looks at Lu Ten with a furrowed brow and the prince remembers he left his mouth hang open.

"You did!" Kuzon gasps. "Oh Agni, you don't dance anymore in your time, do you?"

Lu Ten finally closes his mouth.

“Not like this.”

Then Kuzon is grabbing his hands and pulling him up from the ground while muttering curses.

"The Prince of the Fire Nation... doesn't know the most flamin' moves of the Summer Solstice Festival... what has the world come to..." He's shaking his head angrily. "I'm gonna teach you."

It's not an offer. It's a statement. Lu Ten still feels like he'd rather refuse.

"Uh, thanks but I don't think I-"

"That's a good start, don't think anything. Dancing's not about thinking."

Lu Ten doesn't actually know why he agrees to it. Maybe he's been bored lately. Maybe he's curious about dancing. Maybe he _wants_ to dance with Kuzon.

His friend shows him moves with ridiculous names like _The Phoenix Flight_ or _The Camelephant Strut_ and tells him he taught the same ones to his best friend years and years ago when they went to festival together. He tells him sometimes they would just dance even when there wasn't a festival around, even when there was no music at all, just for the sake of dancing.

And then, before he can think twice, Lu Ten is dancing.

He thinks of Kuzon as a boy the same age as Zuko, and the little Air Nomad he taught dancing moves to. He thinks of the two boys, young and smiling and dancing.

Lu Ten jumps around and his movements are awkward and don't exactly follow the music but he's dancing.

Lu Ten's dancing and Kuzon's smiling at him and maybe in this moment it doesn't matter that they are grown men, war-torn soldiers, that they are dead. They are just dancing.

-

They dance at the Summer Solstice every year after that.

They dance other times too, when there's no music of the human world to seep through to them.

They dance just for the sake of dancing.

-

Lu Ten finishes carving the last pai sho tile. They are crude, not as elegant as his father's set - Lu Ten's never been an artsy kid, that's more Zuko, really - but they are perfect for the job.

And the job is to teach Kuzon how to play.

His friend puts up a protest, at first. He says he can't, that his attention span isn't fit for pai sho at all.

"Please," Lu Ten says as he gestures accross from himself on the ground where he's drawn the lines of the board into the dust. "I let you teach me those horrible dance moves."

Kuzon sighs and sits down, cross-legged.

"You liked those dance moves," he pouts. A grown man like him shouldn't be pouting but Kuzon makes it work. "Everyone likes those dance moves."

Lu Ten rolls his eyes.

He patiently starts to explain the rules and the function of the tiles, trying to remember the way his father explained them to him for the first time. After that, they play and alright, Kuzon really _is_ terrible at it.

“Urgh,” he groans after loosing for the fourteenth time. “I can’t do this, I told you already, just like I told Aang, that I-”

“Aang?”

Kuzon freezes, eyes gone wide. Then he sighs, dropping his shoulders.

“He’s... he was the friend I told you about,” he says, visibly deflated. The Air Nomad boy, Lu Ten thinks. “He was the first one to try to teach me pai sho, actually.”

“Wait, so you knew the rules already?” This is not what Lu Ten should be hang up on but...

“Hehe, yeah, I might...” Kuzon scratches his neck nervously.

“Then why did I spend two hours explaining them to you?”

“You seemed so enthusiastic, Prince Hotman, I didn’t wanna interrupt.”

“Agni have mercy,” Lu Ten mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose, and Kuzon just smirks at that. They both know how Agni’s mercy works.

“So Aang taught you pai sho?” Lu Ten asks.

“Yeah...”

“And I guess he beat your ass every time you played, didn’t he?”

“Hey, it wasn’t fair, okay? He was taught by this old monk who was like the best at pai sho and... and you know what, I’m pretty sure _you_ were taught by your dad, so it’s not like this is fair either!”

Lu Ten huffs. He would laugh, _he would, really_ , if he wasn’t missing his father so much. If he was here, he could teach Kuzon too.

“I’m sorry,” his friend says. He must have seen it on Lu Ten’s face. Lu Ten doesn’t get how Kuzon can read him like an open book. “I know you miss your dad.”

“I do,” the prince admits. “What about your parents? You must miss them too.”

Kuzon pulls up his knees to rest his chin on them. He stays silent for so long, Lu Ten thinks this is a topic he shouldn’t have brought up.

“I haven’t seen them since... since I was old enough to enlist.” Kuzon’s voice is quiet. It’s small. It doesn’t fit him, his loud, nonchalant self at all. “My mom wanted to talk me out of it but I couldn’t be stopped. My dad was proud. But that’s just because he didn’t know the real reason why I joined the army.”

“The real reason?”

“I told you, didn’t I? I wanted to find Aang.”

He takes up a pai sho tile, shifting it in his hands, playing with it, perhaps to distract himself. “I was right, you know? Some of the Air Nomads did manage to escape...”

Lu Ten remembers learning about this. He knows they were all tracked down and killed in the end. He also sees, as if for the first time, the scorchmarks on Kuzon’s clothes and armour and he has a terrible, terrible suspicion about how they got there.

“You helped them,” he breathes.

Kuzon nods firmly. A while ago, in a time that doesn’t just feel like another life but really _is_ another life, Lu Ten would have been furious to learn that this man, who’s become his friend, was a traitor. But that was in another life.

“I found loopholes wherever I could,” Kuzon sighs. “I distracted or mislead my superior officers, I smuggled refugees through checkpoints... And it went fine, actually, until it didn’t.”

He shrugs.

“Long story short, I was caught. It was two kids, two girls from the Western Air Temple, didn’t even have their arrows yet. I tried to save them and I kinda-sorta went directly against my orders. Against my commander, actually.” Kuzon is grinning. He shouldn’t be grinning when talking about how he _died_ , for all the spirits’ sake, but he does.

Lu Ten thinks he might need to lie down for a second.

“Hey hotman, it’s okay. It was a while ago, get over it. I have.” Kuzon kicks him lightly with the tip of his boot. “Now do you wanna finish that game or are we just chatting for the rest of eternity?”

-

Sometimes Lu Ten gazes at the sky and wonders. The sky that is so different from the one at home, in Caldera, even different from the one in the Earth Kingdom, but he doesn't mind that so much.

He knows they can never fulfill their promises and he wonders if it means he will stay here for an eternity, under this strange sky, dancing and playing pai sho with Kuzon.

Part of him wouldn't mind that so much.

Part of him longs to see his father again, longs to leave this world between worlds, this land under this strange sky.

-

Six years have passed since Lu Ten woke up - since he died at Ba Sing Se - and on the horizon of their strange sky, a comet appears. It's far away, in the human world, not here. It's faint and pale but they can feel its power.

Lu Ten remembers the speculations, the plans, the anticipation of the return of Sozin's comet.

Kuzon remembers the pain it brought on the world - and on him - a hundred years ago.

There are tears in his eyes and he lets them spill and Lu Ten remembers he's never seen him cry freely before.

And there's nothing the prince can do but tell Kuzon he's sorry. Sorry for his great-grandfather's sins, his family's sins. He can't fix them, he can't undo them. He can't bring back the boy who was Kuzon's friend.

The comet comes and goes and Lu Ten can't bear to think of the pain it brings. There's nothing he can do but hold his friend as he cries.

-

They’ve had their fair share of encounters with various spirits - there was that panda-spirit, for one, that he thought little Zuko would have absolutely adored - but Lu Ten thinks this one might be the nicest of them all.

She comes one night, looking specifically for them and that’s remarkable on its own, because _no one_ looks for them. They are barely tolerated here in the Spirit World, but most of the time they are just ignored. She still finds them.

She’s beautiful. Her white hair and her dress seem to float in the air with each step she takes. She shines with a light that reminds the prince of moonlight reflecting on the sea as he watches from the beach on Ember Island. And she’s young. She’s so young. Lu Ten swears she can’t be older than sixteen.

“Prince Lu Ten and Kuzon of the Fire Nation,” she greets them formally and they both bow before her. Silence falls on the forest that is their home and Kuzon’s hand slips into Lu Ten’s.

“Kuzon of the Fire Nation,” the spirit calls to Lu Ten’s friend and she’s not so formal anymore. There’s a smile tugging in the corner of her lips and she looks young, a playful glint in her eye. “Somebody’s here to see you.”

With that, she’s gone. But they aren’t alone.

A small figure fights their way through the branches of the trees.

“Princess Yue!” The stranger calls out and he’s... he’s a boy. That’s not exactly what Lu Ten expected. “Hey, excuse me, have you two seen Princess Yue? I could swear she was here just now...”

The boy seems about thirteen and he’s the first airbender Lu Ten’s ever seen. He’s wearing yellow and orange robes and there’s a tattoo of an arrow on his bald head and-

And Kuzon is gripping Lu Ten’s hand like his life depends on it.

“A-Aang?” he whispers in a trembling voice.

The kid’s grey eyes fix on him and go wide as two saucepans.

“Kuzon?”

Then Lu Ten is forced to let go of his friend’s hand because the boy’s running towards them and he jumps up, wrapping his arms around Kuzon’s neck, screaming his name in joy. Kuzon stumbles but holds his ground and neither of them fall over. They just laugh.

“I can’t believe you are here! How can you be here?” The kid - Aang - is yelling.

“How can _you_ be here?”

“Oh, I’m the Avatar,” Aang answers casually, still laughing, and okay, Lu Ten was definitely not expecting that.

“The what?” He hears his own voice before he thinks twice. He didn’t want to intrude in their reunion but _Kuzon, did you hear what I heard, did your childhood best friend who came back from the dead really just announce he’s the Avatar, like it’s no big deal?_

“Oh, I forgot!” Kuzon slaps his forehead. “Aang, Lu Ten. Lu Ten, Aang.”

Lu Ten bows formally because even if they are - apparently - not addressing it, this kid’s still the Avatar, though he looks way too young to be.

“Lu Ten?” Aang asks and goes back to staring with wide-eyes. “Like Prince Lu Ten?”

“Uh, yes, I...” Lu Ten hesitates. He’d rather the kid didn’t find out about his family, at least not immediately, given... well, given everything they’ve done in the past hundred years.

“I know your father!” Aang says with a bright smile and Lu Ten’s heart skips a beat. “Iroh! And your cousin, Zuko! He’s one of my best friends!”

Lu Ten drops down on the ground. Kuzon has the sense to propose they all sit down while Aang talks. And the kid talks a lot. He has a lot to say, after all.

They learn that he ran away after finding out he was the Avatar and somehow got himself frozen in an iceberg for _a hundred years_. They learn about the friends who found him and their adventures and about the war. They learn that Lu Ten’s father gave up the siege of Ba Sing Se after his death and his brother got crowned Fire Lord instead of him. They learn about Zuko’s banishment and Lu Ten feels like he wants to personally cross over to the human world just so he could haunt his uncle Ozai. They learn about the fall of Ba Sing Se, about the eclipse and about Sozin’s comet.

They learn that the war is over.

The war is over and Lu Ten’s father is alive and he’s opened a tea shop in Ba Sing Se. And Lu Ten’s cousin is alive and he’s the Fire Lord. Lu Ten’s head is spinning and that’s not even counting the fact that Kuzon’s childhood best friend is alive and he’s the Avatar. And he’s the last airbender, but from his stories it’s clear that he’s not alone.

He’s a good kid, Lu Ten likes him. He deserves not to be alone, he thinks.

-

They spend the whole day together. Aang has many more stories to tell, about using an Earth Kingdom city’s post-system for sliding and about holding a secret dance party in a cave while undercover in the Fire Nation - Agni, the world really was saved by a bunch of literal _children_.

Still, Lu Ten hasn’t laughed this much in a very long time and Kuzon looks like he hasn’t either.

But the day ends and Aang needs to leave.

And, Lu Ten realises, Kuzon does too.

“Kuzon,” he whispers. “Your promise...”

“Hmm yeah, I guess it was fulfilled, after all,” his friend muses as he waves a hand in front of his face. Lu Ten hasn’t realised this before but it looks sort of transparent. Fading.

“What are you talking about? What promise?” Aang interjects.

“The only reason we are here, Aang,” Lu Ten explains quietly. “Is because we both made a promise we didn’t fulfill. See, he promised he would find you.”

“And you did it for me, hotman,” Kuzon says with a wink. “You found me.”

“But that means-” Aang can’t finish.

“Time to go,” Kuzon nods.

“Where?”

“I have no idea. I’ll see when I get there, I think.” He glances at Lu Ten.

Lu Ten puts both hands on his friend’s shoulder and squeezes them, looking him in the eye. They don’t speak, but they don’t need to.

Then Kuzon grins his crooked grin and pulls both of them into an unexpected hug. Aang laughs and buries his face in the man’s shirt.

“I missed you, Kuzon,” he mumbles. “I’m gonna miss you...”

“Me too, hotman.”

Then he’s gone and Lu Ten is left alone with the last airbender. And he thinks it’s okay if he hugs the kid just a little tighter.

-

Aang seems unsure about leaving him here alone but Lu Ten tells him it’s alright.

“I’ll be fine, kid, just go,” he says. “Maybe pop in to visit some time, would you? And if you see my father, tell him I said hello.”

“I will, Prince Hotman,” the boy promises sincerely and he bowes for emphasis. Then he’s gone.

Lu Ten doesn’t see him again until the Summer Solstice.

They dance then, to the music that seeps through the curtain that separates their worlds.

-

Years and years pass until Lu Ten fulfills his promise.

His father is an old man by then, so much older than he remembers. But he finds the way here.

Lu Ten can’t believe his eyes. He still chooses to, because this is the Spirit World and nothing makes sense and anything can happen. He embraces his father, both of them sinking down on their knees, wet trails of tears on their faces.

His father is an old man now, but he’s also a man who lived through not just war, but peace.

And he’s here, he’s here, he’s here-

Lu Ten feels like a child again and he buries his face in his father’s shirt, smudging it with his tears.

It’s okay, his father doesn’t mind.

-

Lu Ten makes tea.

It’s not as good as how his father makes it, but it’s enough. They spend the day together because there are stories to tell and several rounds of pai sho to play.

When Lu Ten leaves, he thinks back to Kuzon’s words. _I’ll see when I get there, I think._

He thinks - or is it just hope? Is it perhaps sound, unshakeable knowledge? - that wherever it is, his friend will be waiting for him there.

Lu Ten says goodbye and his father sings.

It’s an old song, his favourite lullaby.

-

Leaves fall in a forest under a strange sky and Iroh sings.

**Author's Note:**

> thank lok for nothing else but making iroh canonically move into the spirit world after his death. it provided a great ending to this fic.  
> tbh i don't know if this is still the "some friendships are so strong they can even transcend lifetimes" category or the "i accidentally made it gay, my bad" category. you decide for yourself....  
> -  
> thank you for reading it! kudos and comments give me life!!  
> -  
> find me on tumblr @afuckindelighttobearound
> 
> (ps. if there was ever a fic of mine i would love to see people make fanart of, it's this one)


End file.
